Mary de Pompa

Music, history-buff, sports fan, traffic geek, stargazer and opinionated observer. Had an X account hacked and unable to regain. Careful of messages! Carpe diem

[Ronan Farrow @RonanFarrow]

1/3 Musk ordered last week's slowdown of Starshield, which Ukraine fights on, after talking with Trump, per @WSJ. In '23 the Pentagon signed a contract with SpaceX to “prevent Musk from turning off the switch," per fmr Under Sec of Defense Colin Kahl.
https://t.co/spSZRuaowe

[The Wall Street Journal @WSJ]

Exclusive: AI just found one of the most severe online bugs ever. It puts up to 70% of the world’s websites at risk. https://t.co/e8i1kW0SvR

[Reuters @Reuters]

Cyber agency warns websites may go dark as PHP prepares critical fix https://t.co/FKruHiwdWW https://t.co/FKruHiwdWW

[International Cyber Digest @IntCyberDigest]

‼️BREAKING: PHP has released its fix for the two leaked flaws, which can let attackers run code on servers without logging in.

"There are no complete mitigations, updating is the only safe choice," PHP says.

Update to PHP 8.5.12, 8.4.27, 8.3.36 or 8.2.35 now.

PHP says Apache with mod_php is most at risk, with a demonstrated exploit that fires before any application code runs.

PHP 8.1 and older get no official update, though PHP has published source backports for 7.4, 8.0 and 8.1.

[Insider Paper @TheInsiderPaper]

ALERT - Multiple websites worldwide could go dark as critical PHP flaws spark global cyber alert

https://t.co/piAlPSgLiG

[GMO/Toxin Free USA @GMOFreeUSA]

GREAT NEWS: Roundup-Cancer Case Allowed to Move Forward. Judge Jeff Harris denied Monsanto’s motion for summary judgment in Marvin Kent Shull’s Roundup-Cancer lawsuit, marking what may be the first ruling in the U.S. to test the scope of the U.S. Supreme Court’s Monsanto Company V. Durnell decision in June. Shull, a Missouri farmer, sued Monsanto alleging strict liability design defect, failure-to-warn, negligence, and fraud, arguing that 30 years of Roundup use caused his cancer. Monsanto sought summary judgment, claiming Shull’s amended petition was essentially a repackaged failure-to-warn claim and thus preempted due to the Supreme Court ruling. Judge Harris rejected Monsanto’s argument, noting that Durnell addressed only failure-to-warn claims and did not extend to design defect or negligence claims. The court found it would be an “unwarranted expansion” to apply the ruling to those theories, which were not before the Supreme Court. Judge Harris rejected Monsanto’s implied-preemption argument, allowed Shull to amend his petition to focus on design defect and negligence, and declined to strike his punitive damages claim, finding he had presented evidence that could support such damages.

Despite the entire Trump administration putting their weight behind supporting Bayer-Monsanto and the Supreme Court ruling in favor of Monsanto, there is still a path forward for Monsanto's victims. MAKE BAYER-MONSANTO PAY.
https://t.co/HRJ3eKjKrG

[Al Jazeera English @AJEnglish]

Anthropic, the AI company known for creating the chatbot Claude, recorded a net loss of more than $80bn in the first half of 2026, according to the Wall Street Journal. https://t.co/IUwfpBiNud

[TODNewsHub @TODNewsHub]

Metro to Georgetown?

Metro should revisit the Blue Line Loop and finally create a serious long-term expansion plan for the region. WMATA’s most ambitious expansion concept would deliver:

• A second Rosslyn station and Potomac tunnel
• New stations in Georgetown and West End
• New connections at Union Station and Navy Yard
• Service to Buzzard Point and St. Elizabeths
• An extension to National Harbor
• Relief for the Rosslyn bottleneck

The DMV will keep growing whether Metro prepares for it or not.

Maintaining the system isn’t enough. It’s time to start planning the next generation of Metro.

Build the Bloop.

[The Washington Post @washingtonpost]

The Trump administration is spending at least $343,100 on video cameras to monitor several of President Trump’s construction projects, federal records show, after the president falsely accused “vandals” of causing the damage to the Reflecting Pool. https://t.co/xoATufwfkN

[CNN @CNN]

The Australian lawmaker hit by a car in an allegedly deliberate attack has now had both her legs amputated, her husband of 40 years Phil Haines announced. https://t.co/dYTAuf1yVA

[NWS Wakefield @NWSWakefieldVA]

Widespread minor coastal flooding is expected over the next couple of days with locally moderate flooding possible. Coastal Flood Advisories are in effect where minor flooding is expected, with a Coastal Flood Warning in effect for VA Beach where moderate flooding is expected.

[Localize - Farmers Market @Localizefoodapp]

Democrats and Republicans just teamed up to stop Bill Gates's fake butter.

Savor's butter is built in a lab from captured carbon dioxide, hydrogen, and methane, not a single cow involved.

The startup is bankrolled by Breakthrough Energy Ventures, the climate fund Gates leads.

A new bipartisan bill would force the lab-made spread to carry a "lab-created" label.

Skip the carbon capture science project and get real butter from a local dairy farmer on Localize.
Sources: Green Queen 2026, WBAY

[Capital Weather @capitalweather]

We're gonna run out of superlatives describing how nice our weather will continue to be across the DC region straight through this weekend.

Today (Wednesday) is a touch cooler than yesterday, but still plenty nice.

Get the daily forecast details at https://t.co/r3dKxepf5m and the Capital Weather app.

And enjoy this photo of crabapples by Jen Riskus!

[International Cyber Digest @IntCyberDigest]

The day the internet broke, and most of it is too old to fix.

[Axios @axios]

AI is getting better at hacking power and water systems, new research shows https://t.co/f6iL6NILhK

[TODNewsHub @TODNewsHub]

Metro is quietly expanding by building new entrances at existing stations.

The furthest along is Crystal City, where a $146 million second entrance is under construction at the northwest corner of 18th Street South and Crystal Drive:

• Opening in 2027
• New mezzanine
• Three new elevators
• Direct access from Crystal Drive
• Easier transfers to VRE and Metroway

These projects expand each station’s walkshed, shorten trips and put thousands more residents and jobs within easy reach of Metro...all without laying a single mile of new track.

Which station should get another entrance next?

[Yale Environment 360 @YaleE360]

The world is on track for 2.8 degrees C of warming this century, a gross breach of international climate targets, according to a new U.N. report.
https://t.co/VyIrUIlFP9

[International Cyber Digest @IntCyberDigest]

‼️BREAKING: Cloudflare says it is already seeing early attacks on the two leaked PHP flaws, hours before the patch.

Its CTO Dane Knecht says WAF rules for the known exploit vectors are live for all customers, including free plans, but calls them "a STOPGAP only".

Websites are going dark while they wait. NotuBiz, used by 100+ Dutch local governments, pulled council information sites offline, including those of Den Bosch, Breda and Eindhoven.

explain xkcd and the Star Citizen Wiki are down too.

PHP ships the fix at 14:00 UTC today.

[International Cyber Digest @IntCyberDigest]

‼️ BREAKING: Two leaked remote code execution flaws in PHP are real, watchTowr confirms.

PHP will ship fixes for two critical flaws, both rated CVSS 9.2, on Wednesday 21 October at 14:00 UTC, a day before the embargo was due to lift.

CVE-2026-109618 and CVE-2026-109619 first surfaced in a Hacker News post whose author admitted having no evidence beyond "source: trust me, bro".

Kevin Beaumont flagged the leak, and watchTowr confirmed it two hours later.

PHP says it may release sooner if details go public or exploitation appears. It has not named the CVEs or the affected versions.

[Give A Shit About Nature @giveashitnature]

Researchers went into twenty suburban yards in Maryland, raked half the plots and left the other half alone. The raked plots produced 45% fewer moths and butterflies.

Overall emergence dropped 17%. Beetles fell 24%. Spiders fell by as much as 67%. Moth and butterfly diversity dropped about 40%, and the species that vanished were the ones that overwinter as larvae or inside fallen leaves.

Fireflies, moths, bees, and beetles spend the winter in the leaf layer as eggs, larvae, pupae or adults. Bag it up and you've sent them to the dump, and probably to their deaths.

Shredding isn't the compromise people think it is. The same lab tested mulch-mowing against leaving leaves intact, and mulching cut emerging moths almost in half. A mower turns leaves into mulch and everything inside them into paste.

Rake the leaves off the lawn if you need to, then dump them under the trees and in the beds. That's where they'd have blown anyway.

Paths and edges can stay clean. The middle is where the work happens.